


Citadel Lights

by jeffcatson



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/F, post-ME2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-19 03:42:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5952406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeffcatson/pseuds/jeffcatson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One night, in a bar on the Citadel...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Citadel Lights

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [olderladiesfemslashfest](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/olderladiesfemslashfest) collection. 



> Set between ME2 and ME3, and containing references to a couple things we find out in ME3.

Karin Chakwas has lived out decades of her life with a ship thrumming under her feet, with artificial lights marking out artificial days over her head. To find herself back on a still station, even one as large as the Citadel; to find herself without a motor’s solid vibrations grounding her, the star-speckled darkness stretching out from her window: she feels, now, oddly unmoored.

The too-bright artificial sky of the Presidium, the too-still floors, and everywhere: these wide open spaces stretching out before her, crowded with people, the lot of them talking and talking without pause - well, it’s enough to make her want to lock herself in her apartment. There, she could at least imagine that the close walls surround the med-bay of the Normandy, with her charges crowded in the mess just outside, drinking and laughing: the ship a bright, humming beacon surrounded by the quiet stillness of deep space.

Just… oh, not that particular corner of deep space. Not that particular ship. She shudders a little, the recycled air and regulated temperatures of the Presidium suddenly feeling hot and choking: too close, and too sparse, all at once. She breathes, as she’s practiced, and takes note of what she knows to be real: the still ground under her. The artificial sky overhead, rapidly darkening to the deep pinks and purples of the Citadel’s late dusk. The sound of the fountains, running all day and night… she chases away an image of the central monument in the Presidium, what they’d discovered to be not a monument at all but a very real and very functional mass relay - she stops, breathes, and tries again.

Karin thinks of Shepard’s team, scattered as they are to far corners of the galaxy, with their commander grounded and their vessel seized. She remembers Jack’s grudging pride at receiving the Academy’s invitation, and the way Miranda’s gaze had lingered on her as she’d read the letter. Chakwas had spoken firmly to Garrus, still wavering over whether it was time to finally return to his family, and she’d sat for long hours with Tali, who had gone around and around explaining the intricacies of the quarian military before finally admitting that she was terrified of taking on her new responsibilities. Together, and with Shepard at their head, the team could achieve anything - had returned intact from the impossible, even - without her, they’d stumbled and doubted themselves, but carried on anyway. There was work to be done.

Karin exhales slowly, and pushes off from where she’d been leaning against a railing. For her part, she is waiting. The Council has heard everything Shepard has to say; the Alliance has grounded both her and the ship. Really, she can’t help a twinge of sympathy: from all she’s heard, James Vega is a perfectly nice young man, and no doubt doesn’t deserve to be landed for months on end looking after a stir-crazy Shepard aching to return to work. The few messages from her that the censors had allowed through were short and clipped, tight with tension. Karin can understand: the both of them are happiest when stationed on a ship, and pointed towards a mission.

For her part, Hackett had found Karin a position in an Alliance R&D lab. It could have been worse: she is, at least, stationed on the Citadel. She’s at the centre of the galaxy, and surrounded by movement, by people, by politics. The Council remain uninterested in the Reapers’ imminent threat, but one of these days, she’s sure, Shepard’s team will be flying out again. They’d already stolen the Normandy once, after all.

In the meantime: she’s been going to therapy. It’s never something she’s had time for before: the weight of caring for her charges far too pressing and urgent to have left room for her to meditate on her own feelings. The team talked to Shepard on her rounds, but Karin had made sure they knew that her own door was always open. They’d talk, and she’d listen: often of the inconsequential, and often over a glass or two of brandy, and they’d leave walking taller, looking lighter. While she’d never admit it to them, they were her children, and her heart swelled to think of the confidence and the competency they’d all developed under Shepard’s command.

She’s not used to being put quite so on the spot as she feels once she’s in a room with the Alliance therapist. She’s snappish at first, certain he can’t possibly understand: what it is to watch your charges plan out a suicidal mission, how it feels to be quite so suddenly torn from the role of supporter and into that of hostage. Worse, really: they’d been nothing more than meat, to the Collectors. It isn’t until her therapist explains that he also sees a counsellor - that it’s something mandatory, for all Alliance staff in supporting roles - that she begins to understand. To do her job, she can’t have her own baggage. Or, at least, she must be working on it. One of these days, Shepard will need her again: it has happened before. When it’s time to fly out again, she’ll be ready.

Her walk has led her back to the elevators, and, looking around, Karin realises dusk has fallen while she’s been lost in thought. She could head back to her apartment, and pass another evening in vids and rereading old books, but something gives her pause. She won’t be on the Citadel, and with so much free time, forever. Time, perhaps, to take advantage of some of what is, essentially, extended shore leave. She pushes the button for Flux, and smiles to herself, thoughtful.

*

Aethyta’s glad she came to the Citadel, all things told. Illium had been fun, in its way: the liberal rules ensured that while there were few vices that visitors couldn’t enjoy, they usually wouldn’t be at the expense of someone unwilling or otherwise coerced. Further, while she’d mostly stayed out of the shadier dealings going on in the dark corners of her Illium club, she’d loved the tamer stories and gossip that people brought over to her bar there.

The Citadel’s different. It’s all politics, often feeling much more underhanded than even Illium could be. Illium, at least, was honest: drop enough credits, and almost every door was open to you. The Citadel deals, instead, with influence, with whispers, and the goods passed around are more insubstantial and yet more powerful than any she’d seen traded on her club floor.

Nevertheless: the place has its charms. More aliens passing through, many excited to be finally on shore leave and ready to share a drink, or a story, or even a few hours in her apartments above the club. An ever-changing rota of clientele, and many of them so very young: she’d lean on the bar and watch them, dancing and flirting, some stumbling into what looked to be their first relationships, with a smile. And, on occasion: someone would catch her eye. Someone who looked especially interesting, or who could convince her, with their words, with their hands, their company: she should get to know them better. And, even: they should stay in touch. In the months she’s spent on the Citadel, the list on her omni-tool has steadily grown, and she finds herself, now, able to not lack for company most nights of the week.

She hasn’t slept with an asari in over a century, and isn’t sure she will again. She sighs at herself: one thousand years old, and she’s still hung up on some long-gone ex-girlfriend. She tells herself, when the memories of her come too close - her Nezi, so smart and thoughtful, so kind - Nezi hadn’t loved her. She’d wanted power, and as soon as she’d found it, she’d been off across the galaxy: attachments be damned.

There’d always been something, though, that didn’t quite seem right with that story - the Nezi she’d known hadn’t even been interested in Aethyta’s ideas of blunt-fisted politics, of fighting to increase their influence. Strange that she’d side with someone like Saren, even more bent on violently reshaping the galaxy to suit himself, never mind the collateral. She wonders, sometimes, whether Nezi had had a different plan all along… but, in any case. It hardly matters now. One other thing you can say for the Citadel: it holds plenty in the way of distraction.

When the human woman walks into her bar, Aethyta is distracted, all right. 

She’s older, for a human: unlike many others, she’s opted to keep the lines around her eyes and mouth, and the grey hair, that come with age. Aethyta’s never understood the human obsession with youth - asari proudly wear the markers denoting their progression into each new life stage, and the turians she’s known hadn’t shut up about their progress along their damned Hierarchy - but the humans seem to all want to look as though they are newly enlisted recruits, instead of the competent, experienced people she knows many of them to be.

In any case: this one is older, and she wears her age, and her rank, well. She stands straight, the military background a dead giveaway, even dressed as she is in comfortable civilian wear. There’s a tiredness in her face, but it doesn’t quite tamp down the bright, curious spark in her eyes: she’s looking around at the club, evidently a newcomer. Interested, and not intimidated. Aethyta puts down the glass she’s been polishing, and leans forward onto the counter, affecting a relaxed pose. When the woman’s eyes land on her, she lets her face break into a sunny smile.

The human looks around, and then looks back at her, and Aethyta allows her smile to turn a touch predatory: the smallest hint of teeth, the most subtle knowing look. It’s a familiar dance, this one, and her heart’s kicking up in anticipation, just from feeling the very first steps: what will this one be like? Forthright or timid; dominant or yielding? Something - perhaps it’s her age, she guesses it must have come with no small amount of experience - tells her she could push this one a little harder than most. That she won’t be intimidated by outright flirtation.

Slowly, deliberately, she looks the human up and down as she’s walking towards her, returning to her face and holding her gaze with another smile. To her satisfaction, the human stands up straight under her gaze, returning hers with a knowing tilt of her head, adding the tiniest of sashays to her hips as she moves. She slides smoothly onto a barstool, and Aethyta picks up the empty glass, and sets it with a flourish onto the bar.

So, they’re doing this. These first steps, the anticipation coiled warm in her chest: it’s delicious.

“What’ll it be, then?”, Aethyta says. She isn’t soft, or warm - would have never been able to play the light-hearted, sparky asari, not even in her maidenhood - but the role of gravelly-speaking, matter-of-fact bartender has come to suit her well, over the centuries. To her gratification, it’s interested enough people: she’s found partners among all species and genders who have loved her butch demeanour. This human, too, quirks an eyebrow, and leans forward to reply with a smile.

*

Her name’s Karin, she tells her, soon after her eyes have lit up at the first taste of the brandy cocktail Aethyta had mixed up for her. She’s Alliance, of course: says she’s here working on R&D, but that she’s aching to be back out on her ship. She lights up to talk about her ship, and her commander - doesn’t name either, but Aethyta thinks that she could make a guess. Aethyta doesn’t push; doesn’t ask her whether they’d had an asari information broker on board, chases the thought from her own head firmly. Tonight is for her, and her companion: reality can wait for a few hours.

She listens to Karin, and watches her face as she lights up to speak of her crew, her hands animated and enthusiastic as she describe how they’d dealt with the ship’s culture clashes. Karin had watched a krogan and a turian become, against the odds, comrades-in-arms, and later firm friends; she’d stood by her commander when she’d decided to pick up a young quarian, and hugged the quarian herself when she’d later come to her sobbing because the crew sniped at her for mistakes made by her people three centuries prior.

The humans have such short memories, Aethyta thinks: they’re quick to forgive. Aethyta still remembers the devastation the geth had wrought at the start of the quarian/geth conflict; though she knows better than to take part, she can understand others’ shortness with the few quarians who make their way to the Citadel. Then, Aethyta remembers that the Relay 314 incident had only been thirty years prior: Karin would have lived through it, had most likely already been on placement with the Alliance by then. Karin smiles to recount how her ship’s turian sniper had joked with her even as she’d bandaged up his ruined face, and Aethyta thinks it must be less about short memories, and more about adaptability.

Aethyta feels she’s only really Matriarch in name: she’s spent centuries bartending, had never bothered to take on any role involving dispensing wisdom to younger generations. She thinks, now, that Karin could make a good Matriarch. She’s a fixed point for her crew: a place of safety, somewhere they know they can be bandaged up and pick up more medi-gel and perhaps share a drink and a talk. Formal lines of rank be damned: she’s sure that crews do talk to their commanders, but Aethyta’s spent enough time consoling soldiers in their cups to know that sometimes, people just need a stiff drink and a listening ear from a friend, and it warms her to think that Karin provides both to her charges.

She listens to Karin, and watches her speak, and offers up her own stories of breaking up cross-species bar fights and listening to recruits fresh from their first missions. The group from ICT school who were celebrating making N3 with a trip to Illium; the asari who had dragged a squad of turians out drinking and had finally managed to get them loose enough to sing karaoke. They could be talking about anything; Karin catches Aethyta’s eyes on occasion, and sends her a knowing look: soon, they’ll move on. Soon, but for now: this is good. This is easy, back-and-forth oneupmanship peppered with laughter, with comfortable touches of each others’ arms.

Eventually, Aethyta leans in over the bar, and Karin meets her halfway. She hovers just centimetres from her lips, then moves to speak in her ear, and puts out her offer softly.

“My apartment’s just upstairs. Join me for another drink?”

*

They don’t get as far as the drink. When they enter the apartment, Karin takes her by the hips - gently, at first, a request and an invitation - and presses her against the wall. She kisses Aethyta open-mouthed, and slow, reaching up to stroke her fingers along the underside of her crest, aligning her body with hers so that she can feel every movement of her hips, her thighs.

Aethyta leads Karin to her sofa, and lets her straddle her, wanting suddenly to have her hands on her, to commit her to memory. She runs her hands along Karin’s sides, and up her back, even as Karin kisses her more deeply; lets her fingertips glide over her stomach and feels the muscles there twitch, feels her gasp into her mouth. She’s like Thessia’s oceans, Aethyta thinks: there’s a deep stillness in her, a well from which she draws this quiet confidence, this sure competence. Her crew’s lucky to have her - any partner, too, would be lucky to have this. Aethyta leans up into her with a surge of affection, holds her by the waist and grinds her hips upwards, wanting to be closer.

She discovers that Karin’s skin is soft and smooth all over, and that she quickly grows impatient with Aethyta’s light touches, pushing up against her fingernails (“Honestly, I won’t break”, she says, reaching for Aethyta’s wrist to guide her hand.) She lets Aethyta suck bruises into her neck, and leave little bite-marks along her chest and her belly, encouraging her along with her hands and her voice. Karin never lets her drift off into performing a rote repertoire: she wrestles her, pins her, laughs back-and-forth with her. It’s a dialogue, the two of them improvising together just as they’d shared stories; and when Karin flips Aethyta onto her back and pushes herself down onto her hand, Aethyta herself closes her eyes, overwhelmed.

Karin stays still on top of her, stroking soothing hands down Aethyta’s chest. A muscle fluttering against Aethyta’s fingers is the only sign that she needs more, and soon: Aethyta reaches up, tangling her fingers into Karin’s hair and drawing her down to kiss her. She shifts her hand, aligning her thumb to move circles against her and curling her fingers forward, and Karin moans into her mouth, her smooth kisses stuttering; she leans against her forehead, and lets Aethyta set the pace.

She discovers that Karin comes slowly, and all at once; that she needs only the steady, unrelenting pressure that Aethyta’s providing. She guides Aethyta’s wrist, aligning her just so, and buries her face into Aethyta’s neck, gasping all through her climax. Afterwards, she’s more enthusiastic, if anything: she quickly comes up smiling into Aethyta’s mouth, and kisses her in affection and thanks before stroking her way down Aethyta’s body. She mouths her way down along Aethyta’s stomach, before pausing, the question in a raised eyebrow: at Aethyta’s nod, she shifts herself lower, and buries herself between Aethyta’s legs.

There’s kindness, here, too, Aethyta thinks: in Karin’s easy company, her matter-of-fact cheerfulness in bed. She already knows full well that casual sex need not be cold and unintimate; with Karin, she feels as though she’s bedding a close friend. One of her hands comes up to stroke over hers, even as Aethyta feels her other hand pressing gently inside her and curling just so: Aethyta reaches out to tangle her fingers with Karin’s, holding tight to them as she starts to shake apart.

They stay close: Karin lying on top of her, Aethyta running fingernails in lazy circles over her back and through her hair. They fit together well, Aethyta thinks: the both of them tamping down pain and frustration to instead share stories of happier times; this playful sex sending them tumbling over each other, knocking off sparks. Outside, the Citadel never sleeps: skycars draw colourful trails past her windows, and the tech-enhanced sky of the artificial night cycle lightens, signalling dawn. She holds Karin closer, and hopes they’ll do this again.

*

A placement on the ground could, indeed, have been worse, Karin thinks, as she leans up against the Flux bar and watches Aethyta serve a young couple at the other end. Aethyta doesn’t finish work for another hour, but that’s not to stop Karin turning up and having a good time. Aethyta had delivered the DJ the most elaborate cocktail she knows in exchange for her playing a few old Earth tunes; as soon as she finishes up with her customers, she’ll be sliding a glass of ice brandy across the bar and leaning over for a kiss.

They had met up again: just evenings, at first, Aethyta talking her through the bar’s spirit collection before taking her upstairs and to bed. Late nights had turned into late mornings, sharing breakfasts and conversational walks, curling up with vids. It’s not for ever, the both of them know it, but: what is? They’ve both been around long enough to have learned to enjoy a good thing while it’s there, and try not to worry too much about the future.

Drink in hand, bright lights flashing close and beating back the darkness surrounding her, Karin dances.

*

Months later, Karin’s running for the elevators as sirens blare around her, summoning all available medical personnel to Huerta. Her omni-tool tells her they’re already out of beds, and are leaving patients out on trolleys in corridors, on sofas and tables in the waiting rooms; but it’s not as though Karin isn’t used to working in crisis conditions. It’s time - she’d known this would come, sooner or later, and the spark of fear in her chest is mixed with exhilaration: she has a job to do. This is what she was born for: not sitting around, developing new treatments in some lab. She skids to a stop by the elevator, and punches an emergency pack of medi-gel out of a receptacle on the wall: they’ll need all the extra they can get.

Before heading to Huerta, there’s something else Karin has to do. She taps in the code for Aethyta’s apartment’s floor, and bounces on her toes the whole way there, adrenaline singing in her veins.

Aethyta opens her door, a frightened look on her face, and Karin doesn’t hesitate before sweeping her into her arms. A millennium of experience or not: she can’t imagine how it must feel to see the Reapers hovering over your home. Karin’s heart goes out to Aethyta, as it does to everyone else on the Citadel. She’d been to them: she’s already seen what the Reapers are capable of. She’s had years to prepare herself.

“You’re going”, Aethyta says. It’s not a question.

“I am”, says Karin. Aethyta already knows, but Karin draws her close and tells her anyway. “These last few months? They’ve meant more to me than you can know. Thank you, Aethyta: thank you for everything.” She kisses her cheek, her nose, over her eyes. “I don’t know what’s going to happen now. Look after yourself, all right? Keep in touch. Stay alive. I promise - “ - she nudges her, smiling - “I promise I’ll make it worth your while. All right?”

She doesn’t know where she’s going next, but here, in these months on the Citadel, Karin knows: she’s had something good. Something worth defending the galaxy for. As she’s running back to the elevators, she realises: she’s ready. It’s time to do her job.

***

**Author's Note:**

> I have such heart-eyes over Chakwas. Best character or best character? Also, I’m on [ tumblr.](https://jeffcatson.tumblr.com/)


End file.
